Peasant Politics? Village Community and the Crown in Fifteenth-Century England

Abstract

MEDIEVAL ENGLISH PEASANTS paid taxes to their king, fought in his armies, and probably devoted more time each year to his provincial administration than did any other group in society. Yet they scarcely figure in the political histories of their country, except as bearers of the interests of others. Eric Hobsbawm summed up the orthodox view approvingly when he wrote at the launch of The Journal of Peasant Studies that, prior to the eighteenth century, peasants appear to belong in economic or social history, but rarely in political history [he proffers China as a possible exception], since rulers rarely have to bother for more than a moment about what happens in the villages.' In their revolts alone do peasants escape this judgment, and even here the reprieve is partial, the emphasis being on what peasants resist rather than on what they create, on their defeat and the disappearance of their moment of coherent, collective consciousness.2 The routine political activities through which medieval English peasants regularly participated in the crown's provincial politics slip by unnoticed.3 My quarrel with this approach,has two parts. First, medieval English peasants participated in the crown's provincial politics partly at least on their own terms and for their own ends, and in the process they influenced both the form and content of these politics. The grounds on which to make the case have already been